June 2013

Mythology

Below is one of my favorite posts from the old Story Arcs. Enjoy! I was looking for something to blog about today and couldn’t think of anything. Than got me thinking about this weekend when I was trying to work through a story component and couldn’t move any further. In the end, I solved it because I started thinking on certain things and that led to some story ideas that I had been pursuing and before long I was ping ponging between plot points, ideas, and myths until I had the whole scene figured out. Now, what was I thinking about? Mythology. What kind? I’ll get to that in a minute. The first point I want to make is the value of those stories that came before us. Way before us. Everything from Beowulf to to fairy tales to Olympus. A lot of these are tales we’ve been telling for…

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Writing Progress 06/11

Didn’t write last night much, about a thousand words after getting home from an MBA class. I liked what I generated though. I’m kind of in a weird spot right now and having a hard time pushing through this part of the story. It was a moment where things just kind of jumped off the rails (literally, actually) and now I was driving the story in a direction I hadn’t anticipated. With a character I hadn’t planned on. But this is how it always is for me when I’m creating new content. Transitions are difficult for me and are usually doe on the second run through, like seams. Dialogue, much to my shame, is also a difficult part to handle in these moments, especially when they’re are more than two characters. That’s something I’m trying to work on as an author as a whole. So now, I’m just writing the…

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Outlining

I see my story as a movie. That’ s just how my imagination works. I see scenes from camera angles and imagine the little black blips that pop up on the movie screen at the theater. And it always tends to be like a trailer from the beginning. You know what I mean, two minutes of the best scenes mashed together with big, bold words cut in between. You see a dozen of the movie’s best lines, three or four amazing actions scenes, all narrated by a gravelly voice. I have always been a sucker for a good trailer. And that’s how I see my story. I see all my favorite scenes, the ones that are the reason I’m writing the whole book to begin with, where the tension is at its height and the most memorable events happen. But a good story is an undulating wave of tension. It…

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U.S. VS Apple

Fortune has a good article summing up the whole deal between the Department of Justice and Apple (and the publishing industry). Thanks for Passive Voice for the article. There’s not a lot I can add here because I’m not a legal professional. I can’t speak to the legality or moral authority of any of the parties involved. However, I would like to say this. A lot of people say Amazon sicked the DOJ on Apple and big publishing because, well, they’re Amazon and that’s what they do. That’s how they compete, they drive down the little guys like Microsoft was doing against Netscape. Here’s the thing, when Netscape “sicked” the DOJ on Microsoft, it was a desperate act to try and compete with Internet Explorer. Whether or not it was warranted or if they did it at all aside, everyone said they did it because they knew Netscape was in…

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How To Share a PS4 Game

Sony has a new video showing how to share a PS4 game. This pretty much sums up their attitude when it comes to next gen as well. I’ll be the first to say the PS4 can be a pain in the ass to use, but I think Sony has learned their lesson. I’m sure they’ll come along and released something as bad as Xbox One, but at the moment they are definitely giving a better showing.

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